I recently spent some time chatting with Steve Long at Black Hills Fox News. He compiled this nice little story on my current adventures.

A local woman first fell in love with photography at age 12 ,and says she’s never really set the camera down since.

For the past few years she’s sold her work at craft shows and *other people’s* galleries.

But in a couple weeks she plans the grand opening of her own small gallery, ‘A Long the Way” in her hometown of Rapid City.

Bonny Fleming uses her camera like a poet uses words.

Fleming says, “What I try to take pictures of is the stuff that I can’t believe I’m looking at.”

She works full time doing graphic design and spends her free time pursuing what she’s loved since childhood.

Bonny Fleming says, “For me it’s the excuse to sort of blow those things off a little bit and run off and play and be out in the world and see what it has to show me.”

Born in Deadwood, she says she moved to Rapid City around age 5.

Bonny Fleming says, “I realized that being outside and seeing what’s out there is what makes me happy, a beautiful sunset or a cool thunderstorm or watching some buffalo, or even the way the grass looks.”

Bonny with an eye for moments: equals Bonzeye Photography.

Bonny Fleming says, “I’ve figured out there’s 9 ways out of Rapid City and so the challenge is, you know, which way out of Rapid City you’re gonna go. And the reality is, you know you’re gonna find whatever adventure you find when you go down that road, and every other road is gonna have it own adventures that you’re gonna have to let go of.”

Every picture has it’s own life story.

Fleming says, ” One of them looks just exactly like that mom buffalo is kissing that baby buffalo.”

“Looking up when you’re inside a teepee without the outside on and I just looked up and I couldn’t believe how beautiful the clouds looked and the way it contrasted with the poles,” says Fleming.

Fleming says, “I have this rattle snake and it kinda jars you but I think people like that because that emotion is transferred from me to them through looking at the photograph.”

Or the time she caught a rainbow and lightning at the same time.

Fleming says, “And I got out and it was still raining and I lifted up the hatch of my truck so I could get my tripod under it and try to stay as dry as possible and just shot and shot and shot”

Her imagination, her way of seeing the world, is not limited to one picture at a time.

Bonny Fleming says, “These are new things I’m doing. I’m calling it the Synthesis Series. What I’m doing is I’m stacking my photography on top of my photography. I’ve called it painting with photography.”

Steve says: Combining her photos to create a single image that somehow simply blends into one.

“You put a forest on a buffalo’s back and all of a sudden it looks like fur. Or, you know, I put this waterfall down this butterfly wing and it just fit in this odd way,” she says.

Even her Gallery embraces her view of the world, a Raven photo topped by a black hat, or a lamp wearing a scarf.

Fleming says, “If there’s a way to change the world so simply as showing people how you see it, you know, that’s what I want. And for them to know it’s for sale,” she says with a laugh.

If you’ve met someone cool “Along the way”, please e–mail or call us with your story ideas.

She just recently filed for a Federal Tax ID: which means officially transitioning her hobby into a business.

Her official gallery grand opening is set for May 15th.

After that: until business grows, her little gallery behind 616 West Street, will be open by appointment only.